A vibrant place in the heart of the city, Canberra Museum and Gallery celebrates the region's social history and visual arts with dynamic exhibitions and unique community programs and events.

Housing a permanent collection, Reflecting Canberra, and a variety of local, national and international exhibitions, CMAG provides a refreshing insight to the integration of social history and the visual arts.

Reflections

manufactured by Carl Bamberg, Berlin
Gift of the ACT Office of the Commissioner

for Surveys 2001

SURVEY EQUIPMENT COLLECTION

The Bamberg theodolite – a surveyors’ instrument for measuring
horizontal and vertical angles – is part of CMAG’s Survey
Equipment Collection, comprised of 150 artefacts donated by
the ACT Offi ce of the Commissioner for Surveys in 2001. It was
used in the Federal Capital Territory survey carried out under
the fi rst Commonwealth Director of Lands and Surveys, Charles
Robert Scrivener, who had played a signifi cant role in the
selection and planning of the Federal Capital site. Following the
selection of the Yass-Canberra site in 1908, survey teams under
Scrivener’s direction completed a contour survey map of the
proposed city’s site which was sent to applicants in the Federal
Capital design competition.

In the 1912-13 Annual Report for the Lands and Survey Branch
Scrivener states that a ‘…geodetic survey should be the
foundation for every other class of survey, the standard to
which all other work would be referred…’. He referred to the
8-inch Bamberg theodolite used for this survey as ‘not now
rated very highly’ but acknowledged that the results were fairly
satisfactory ‘as the average closing error of the triangles
observed, having sides averaging from 5 to 10 miles in length, is
1.1 seconds of an arc’. Scrivener was noted for the high quality
of survey documentation and the clarity, legibility and attention
to detail of his plans and fi eld notes.

The Bamberg theodolite and tripod are on loan to the National
Capital Authority and on display in the Regatta Point
exhibition centre.